Nobody knows this little Rose
by jomiddlemarch
Summary: Emma Green did not have an elder sister.


"Emma, you look troubled," Mary said.

Even so, the younger woman's loveliness remained remarkable within Mansion House. She would have needed to have been blind to miss how the chaplain watched Emma and it seemed every other soldier, Confederate and Union alike, did the same. She had commented about it once to Jedediah and he had said, "Jealous, are you?" quietly sly but she'd known him well enough by then not to be anything but amused by his rejoinder and had breezily replied, "Relieved, actually. I've a mind to write Miss Dix she was correct, I am plain enough to be Head Nurse," delighted with his choked laughter, his muttered, "Plain enough? Lord have mercy." She had walked away then, confident his eyes were upon her, basking in the attention he paid even if she knew it was improper. Mansion House had a way of removing all context, all notions of propriety, Boston further away than the moon. What it was like for Emma was harder to grasp—she lived in the same physical place but everything was altered. Perhaps that was what she struggled with now.

"Nurse Mary, do you think—are there some sins that cannot be forgiven?" Emma asked, her voice low, her hands still busy winding the clean bandages in the basket.

"Frankly, I hadn't expected such a theological conundrum," Mary said, observed Emma wincing at her words, pausing to consider what to say. "I think God is so far beyond us, He may understand anything and understanding, would forgive anything. I think the ones who can't forgive sins are people. Sometimes, even, we are the ones who cannot forgive the sins we commit."

Emma nodded but there were tears in her eyes. She had a mother and younger sister but that did not mean either would listen if she wished to share a confidence or make a confession. It didn't mean Emma could ask without the risk of their judgment, an assessment that could not be unmade.

"Perhaps you might tell me a little more," Mary suggested.

"You will think me quite the worst girl if I do," Emma replied with total conviction.

"Oh, Emma, I don't think that's even possible! And whatever it is, you may find telling me, it is not so very bad. You are a gently brought up young lady but I have been married and widowed. There are more…degrees of latitude than you might imagine," Mary declared.

"I think I must say, I think I'll burst if I don't! I have, had a fiancé, you see, a Confederate soldier and he…came back home for a spell," Emma explained, searching for words with care. Mary waited, her hand occupied with her mending, looking down to allow Emma the time to decide what to say next.

"I, he took liberties I shouldn't have allowed, but I thought we'd be married, I thought I loved him and soon enough I'd be his wife," she said. Mary took a breath, preparing to give some reassurance that what Emma called a sin was nothing like.

"But now I find, I can't marry him, he's done such things, such cruelty and he doesn't even see it, I've sent him away, but I can't forget what we did, what he did and I can't tell anyone," Emma said in a rush. The younger woman had spent months with wounded soldiers now; whatever her beau had done could not have been the usual fighting. Whether it was her duty or not, Mary found she didn't want to know, but she must understand a little more; she could not afford to forgo intelligence that might affect all those she cared for.

"Emma, that young man, what he's done, will it hurt anyone here? At Mansion House?" Mary asked.

"Not anymore, I think. But he did try and I trusted him, I trusted him too much and there's a price to pay." This last was said with such despair and yet, Mary recognized some aspect of it that prompted her to speak.

"Emma, do you suspect you are with child?" Mary asked the question as gently as she could without any obfuscation or euphemism.

"I don't think I can be, I didn't let him—it didn't seem right, he wasn't the one I," Emma replied, the emphasis she'd put on the word _he_ suggesting another problem. She was a brave soul, Miss Emma Green, willing to go places most wouldn't, to risk shame and disapprobation to seek to do right, undeterred about some convictions, able to listen to someone her society would tell her to dismiss. Mary considered what to say. She could imagine Jed, eager to score a point, suggesting _une crise spirituelle_ be addressed with the chaplain and the resultant blush on Emma's face, the retreat she would make. He might be sorry afterward but the damage would be done. Mary would be more heedful.

"I don't believe it is ever a sin to love someone well. I don't think it's even a sin to love someone poorly, though it may be a sorrow. If the only consequence will be to your heart, you may seek consolation in prayer—alone or with guidance. Only, Emma, don't castigate yourself for being mistaken, for being disappointed by him, in yourself. No one else, no one who cares for you would do so and certainly not God, who sees into all our hearts and knows our torments and our joys," Mary said deliberately. Emma dashed away a tear with a handkerchief pulled from her apron pocket, then gave Mary a small, tremulous smile.

"You're so wise, Nurse Mary, and so generous," Emma said. Mary thought of Gustav and Jed, Eliza Foster's feathered bonnet in the landau, of covetousness and denial, a hopeless wish and the one she shouldn't make, the dreams she didn't want to wake from, that left her gasping and yearning and as sad as his dark eyes could be.

"No, Emma, not so wise. Just older. It doesn't do to confuse the two."


End file.
